


Lunch: a time for socializing poorly

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, i just really like boyd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:56:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week passed before anyone bothered to sit across from him in the cafeteria. He didn’t know the girl by name, but he saw her in the halls sometimes. She had a science class near his.</p><p>“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, even though she had already sat down. </p><p>“No. Go ahead,” Vernon said, trying to offer her a smile. It was weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunch: a time for socializing poorly

**Author's Note:**

> I like Boyd and Erica, but I don't like writing romantic relationships because lol I suck. So I did the next best thing and wrote about the beginning of their friendship because I totally believe that they knew each other before Derek turned them all.
> 
> I have no beta. I'm sorry if there are any errors.

Nobody in his family had wanted to move, but things got too bad where they used to live. Businesses were closing quicker than you could blink and houses in their neighborhood hosted drugs and crime as if they were honored guests. 

When he told his friends that he was leaving, they promised to stay in touch. They said that they would write or send an email, but as soon as Vernon Boyd’s family packed their truck and drove off in the direction of a stupid little town called Beacon Hills, they all turned away from the memories and lost themselves in the present.

Boyd couldn’t blame them. He hadn’t been very close to anyone. They were only his friends because he needed a group. Vernon wasn’t the type that always tried to blend into the crowd, but he still didn’t like standing out. People that were easy to spot always got picked on. It still hurt, though, when he always opened his email to an empty inbox. 

His mother sent him to his new school with the promise that things would be different here. He didn’t know what she really meant by that, because it wasn’t like they had suddenly climbed to the top of the social heap. His parents’ backs still bent with the pressure of paying bills and making it in jobs where nobody would ever appreciate a damn thing they did. Despite his doubts, he couldn’t help but smile at her words. His mother’s gentle voice and optimism always managed to soothe him when his nerves were frayed.

Of course, things weren’t different, because the world doesn’t just change when someone moves. He tried to be friendlier. He smiled more and opened up doors for conversations, but it was December when he came. People had picked out their friends and groups were hesitant to open up to outsiders. That first day, he stood in the cafeteria and considered sitting with a friendly, shaggy haired kid that had been in his English class, but nerves made him place himself in a table by himself. 

A week passed before anyone bothered to sit across from him in the cafeteria. He didn’t know the girl by name, but he saw her in the halls sometimes. She had a science class near his.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, even though she had already sat down. 

“No. Go ahead,” Vernon said, trying to offer her a smile. It was weird. 

They didn’t say anything else to each other until the bell rang for them to go back to class. Even then, the girl only paused on her way to the trash.

“My name’s Erica.”

“I’m Vernon.”

They didn’t talk to each other in the halls or in class, but they sat together everyday. Sometimes, they didn’t say a word during the entire lunch period. Other days, Erica would open up the conversation with a story about something that had happened to her that morning, or weird questions that always made Vernon look at her with arched brows and a poorly suppressed smile. The topic of her epilepsy never came up. Vernon saw how she avoided it and he never bothered to press the issue.

“How can you stand sitting with a freak like that?” 

Vernon looked up at the kid that had randomly dropped into the seat across from him. He knew right away who the kid was talking about, but he decided to play dumb and give the kid a chance to think about what he had said. Everyone deserved a chance to check themselves before they got punched.

“What freak?”

The kid (Vernon didn’t know his name and this conversation wasn’t making him want to) nodded towards where Erica stood in line for cookies. Vernon had given her a dollar and asked her to buy him one, too. 

“Erica. She’s crazy, man,” the kid added with a lopsided grin, like he expected Vernon to laugh and agree with him.

“I like Erica,” Vernon said. He could feel his grip tightening on the bag of chips in his left hand. Judging by the way the kid’s eyes suddenly flicked to his fist, he noticed, too.

“Oh. Well, I was just saying, we wouldn’t mind you sitting with us...if you didn’t wanna sit with her.”

“I’ve been here two months. I sat alone for my first week. You couldn’t have invited me then?”

“You know how it is,” the kid laughed, “we had to check you out. Make sure you were cool.”

Vernon snorted.

“Look, Vernon, I’m not being mean,” the kid started, leaning forward.

“It’s Boyd.”

“What?”

“We’re not friends,” Vernon grunted, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “To you, my name is Boyd.”

There was a sharp anger beginning to boil under his skin. For the most part, Vernon was a patient person. Living with his brother meant he had to grow used to stupidity and questionable life choices. This kid, however, was making Vernon want to reach across the table and smack some goddamn sense into him. 

The kid opened his mouth to say something else, but Erica was heading in their direction, two cookies held in one hand. 

“Hey, David,” Erica said when she approached. Her tone was light, but Vernon had grown used to reading her. There was a hardness to the lines of her body that gave away how she felt about David.

David mumbled a hello to her before standing. 

“Offer still stands, dude,” David said and then he was gone.

“What was that about?” Erica asked. She sat down in the seat that David had just left and handed Vernon his cookie.

He broke it in half and stared at the pieces before shrugging his shoulders. “Nothing. Hey, did you hear that some kid set a tack on Harris’ chair today?”

Erica’s eyes lit up at the topic switch and she laughed. “Oh, man, I know who that was. That Stilinski kid. He hangs out with Scott.”

“I heard Harris gave him detention for the rest of his natural born life.”

“Is that possible?”

“Probably not,” Vernon grinned. “But who cares?”  
__________________________

Some more shitheads like David tried to lure Vernon away from the freak of their class. Vernon knew that they weren’t trying to actually be his friend. They just wanted to isolate Erica. It was easier to pick on people when they were isolated. They got to be like babies, easy to poke and prod at, with no one to stop them. Unlucky for them, Vernon wasn’t a toy doll that they could rip from Erica’s hands. He was a person. And he didn’t like any of them very much.

He never told Erica about why David and his buddies had suddenly started walking with him down the halls, but Vernon was sure she knew. Like him, Erica noticed a lot of things, and she wasn’t bad at piecing together the pieces of a puzzle. She never brought anything up, so they continued their ritual of eating together and ignoring the outside world for those twenty minutes. It should have been an easy task for Vernon. Back home, he had spent most of his time trying to imagine that he was in some alternate universe where people weren’t so awful and petty grudges weren’t the type of thing to kill over. Despite his practice, it was hard to ignore the whispers he heard when he walked down the halls. Not everyone talked about Erica, but he sometimes heard them. Most of the time he heard people making fun of the way she dressed.

Vernon never asked Erica to explain her appearance, but she offered one up to him in the middle of lunch.

“Sometimes, I just don’t have the energy to care. And other times, I just don’t want them to know that I give a fuck.”

It was the middle of April when people started whispering about him.

Nobody ever said anything to his face, because they all assumed that he’d be quick to punch them. It was the farthest thing from the truth, considering he had always acted as a peacekeeper among his old friends, but Vernon decided there was no point in trying to squash that belief. Besides, he kind of liked being seen as someone it wasn’t worth messing with. So far, he had no interest in interacting with anyone else in this stupid town, and being the guy that everyone warily eyed as they walked past him meant that he got to be left alone.

He had never considered that Erica had also started to hear other people talking about him until she spoke up during lunch.

“You know,” Erica said, lifting her gaze from a plate of what Vernon thought was supposed to be mac ‘n cheese. “You don’t have to be my friend because you feel bad for me.”

Vernon frowned. “I’m your friend because I think you’re a decent person.”

“You could have way more friends if you didn’t talk to me.”

“I don’t care about being popular,” Vernon said. “Besides, they don’t actually care about me or anyone but themselves.”

Erica snorted, like she didn’t believe him. Before Vernon could say anything more, she stood with her tray clutched tight in her hands.

“I have to go. My mom’s picking me up early,” she said in response to his questioning look. “See you tomorrow, Vernon.”

She walked away before Vernon could say goodbye.  
__________________________

Almost two weeks passed without any sign of Erica. At first, Vernon had assumed that she was irritated with him for some reason. Never one to seek out confrontation, he hadn’t bothered to try and find her in the halls. He figured that, when she was done working through whatever it was she had to work through, she’d come and find him. The fact that Erica wasn’t avoiding him, but out of school completely, didn’t cross his mind until Scott suddenly sat down in her old spot during lunch on Wednesday.

“Dude, have you seen Erica around?”

Vernon looked up from his lunch, which he had been prepared to eat alone. Scott was nervously biting at his lip from his spot across from Vernon.

“You mean she’s not in school?” Vernon finally asked. 

“Uh, she hasn’t been in any classes. You didn’t know that? I thought you guys were, like, super close,” Scott added. 

“No. I mean, yeah, we’re friends but-” Vernon paused to end his rambling, because he was a calm and collected person. He didn’t fucking ramble. “I don’t know where she is. Why do you care?” he added, eyeing Scott with a bit of distrust. Scott normally didn’t align himself with the assholes of their grade, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of doing assholeish things.

“I was just worried,” Scott said quickly. “Erica normally doesn’t miss a lot of school, unless she’s sick or something.”

Vernon nodded, returning his gaze to his lunch. He poked at his peanut butter sandwich. 

“Yeah, well, like I said. I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, I hope she gets better soon,” Scott muttered before standing. “See you in class, Boyd,” he added, offering Vernon a slight grin before walking off.

As soon as he was gone, Vernon stood and threw his lunch in the trash. 

He wasn’t very hungry anymore.  
__________________________

“How did you figure out where I lived?” Erica asked by way of greeting.

It was a fair question. Vernon would’ve asked the same thing of her if she had randomly turned up outside his house. 

“It wasn’t that hard,” Vernon said, shifting awkwardly on his feet. “It’s not a very big town.”

Erica nodded before stepping aside. “Well, you can come in,” she told him before turning away and walking down the hall.

When Vernon searched Erica’s address, he had expected it to point him to the rich part of town where all the big houses had been built. The house he got lead to certainly wasn’t in the poorer part of town, but it was smaller than he had expected. It couldn’t be more than two floors, counting the basement if there was one. As he walked in, he could hear a television playing somewhere, but Erica didn’t lead him towards it. Instead, she led him down a hall until they reached a set of stairs.

“There’s a lot of people in my house and everyone’s hanging out upstairs,” she explained as they made their way down. “So unless you wanna be interrogated by my grandparents, we’re better off down here.”

The basement was well lit, with a television of its own and a large couch. Erica took a seat on one end and Vernon hesitated before sitting down on the other.

“So. Why are you here?” Erica asked as soon as he sat down.

“You haven’t been at school.”

“Yeah, I know. But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

Vernon wondered if Erica was trying to play dumb. “I was worried about you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Erica said. She picked up the remote that had been lying on the seat next to her and began flipping through channels. “I just had some family stuff. Nothing bad, just my sister getting married.”

“You have a sister?” Vernon asked, frowning. Erica had complained about her younger brother a lot, but she had never mentioned a sister. 

“Two of them, yeah.”

“Oh.”

They fell into what would have been an awkward silence if it wasn’t for the television playing loudly in front of them. Vernon looked down at his shirt and picked at the fabric. Maybe he had been stupid to come. Yeah, he considered Erica his only friend at Beacon Hills, but she had never bothered to seek his company outside of the lunchroom. Another couple of minutes passed before Erica leaned forward.

“You never told me why you came.”

Vernon looked up at her with a puzzled expression. “I told you, I was worried.”

“I got that. But why?”

“Cause you’re my friend,” Vernon said simply. Upon noticing Erica’s wide eyes, he added, “You don’t think you’re friends?”

“Uh, well...no,” Erica responded truthfully. 

“I told you that you were my friend.”

“I thought you were lying. To look nice.”

Vernon laughed at that, allowing himself to smile for the first time since walking into Erica’s house. “Do I seem like the type of person to lie just to look nice?” 

Erica’s lips twitched up in a slight smile and she shook her head. “No, you definitely aren’t,” she muttered before clearing her throat and holding out her hand. “Give me your phone.”

Frowning, Vernon reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “Why do you want it?” he asked when Erica took it from him.

“I’m gonna give you my number. Next semester we’re all gonna get new lunch times, right? So, if we’re not gonna be able to hold our lunch dates, you gotta have my number. Otherwise this blossoming friendship won’t take the hit.”

“Blossoming friendship,” Vernon echoed. “We’re not flowers.”

“I’m a flower,” Erica grinned as returned his phone. “You’re kind of like a weed, though. No offense.”

“None taken. Weeds are strong. Flowers just get picked and then they die.”

“Sure, you go ahead and think that if it lets you sleep better at night,” Erica teased, her grin widening before she turned towards the television. “I figure you’re gonna be stuck here awhile, cause I saw you get dropped off by your mom. I was in the middle of a Heroes marathon, if you wanna join me.”

“I’ve never seen Heroes.”

Erica looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Vernon Milfred Boyd,” she gasped.

“My middle name isn’t Milfred.”

Erica swatted the words away with a quick wave of her hand. “That’s not important. What’s important is that you haven’t seen Heroes. It’s a good thing you’re my friend now considering it’s the best show ever. Except for the last two seasons.”

“What about the last two seasons?”

“Those,” Erica grumbled, turning back to the television. “we don’t talk about. Now, shut up and switch off the lights. We’re starting at the beginning.”

Vernon chuckled before getting up and doing as he had been told. 

They got through three episodes before his mom came to pick him up. He sent Erica a text as they pulled away from the curb.

**Disappear on me again and I’ll take your Heroes collection for revenge.  
~Vernon**

He didn’t get a response until he had gotten home and climbed the stairs up to his room.

_Friends don’t steal from friends._

**Oh, we’re friends now?**

_Yep. Sucks to be you. You’re stuck with me._

**I could do worse.**

_In this town, yeah. It really doesn’t get better than me._

Vernon laughed, sending off a quick agreement before switching off his lights and climbing into bed.

Back in his old town, when his mom had first broached the topic of moving, Vernon had been quick to fight it. He had been content where he was and Beacon Hills, when he arrived, didn’t charm him into wanting to live there. In fact, it was a boring town, with next to nothing to do and it was populated almost entirely by close minded assholes. Now, for the first time, he found himself not hating the town quite so much.

Beside him on the bed, his phone lit up with a new text.

**Author's Note:**

> Congrats, you got to the end and didn't die from boredom. I love you. Actually, I love my dogs, and I tolerate you. Toleration is more than what I give most people, though.
> 
> If you want to come bug me, I do have a tumblr. It's killblaine. Please don't ask why.


End file.
